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Using a clever advertising strategy, Nintendo will allow you to make a personalized wish list to your folks, family or friends from Mario. It only takes a couple of minutes to fill in the personal information, the holiday you are shopping for, the color of the Nintendo DS and 3 games you want. You can preview your message and send it by phone or email. We tried to set one up with the simple name of Mom and were told that was too difficult to pronounce. We just hope your name isn’t Poindexter.

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What better way to celebrate Barack Obama’s becoming the President-elect than with a round or two of Super Obama World? Played similarly to Super Mario, the ZenSoft game features pigs and flags and John Phillip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. The game is free for all and if you are a hardcore Barack/Mario fan, there are t-shirts to go with them. Creators Robert Sundling & William Jacobson will be releasing additional levels that will include Arizona, Illinois and D.C.

Tired of changing effects pedals with his feet while performing with his band Vivian Darkbloom, MIT graduate student Rob Morris attached a NintendoWii remote to his guitar with a strip of Velcro. Mapping acceleration and button press values from the Wii, Morris set his Mac to translate the movement of his guitar into a variety of audio effects. The result: a new hybrid instrument that you’ll have to see to believe!

How does it work? The Wii controller sends data to a laptop, so the computer knows where the instrument is positioned, and it knows when he’s pressing buttons on the Wiimote. Morris takes this information and smooths it out a bit with some computer code (MIT grad student, hello…); the data is then sent out of the computer through a firewire cable. This firewire cable then sends the data to his stompboxes and other effects. So, essentially, he’s controlling guitar effects by pressing Wii buttons and gesturing with the instrument, rather than pressing a pedal on the floor.

We were in such disbelief about the jilted online wife who murdered her ex’s avatar on Maple Story that we thought we would share a more pleasant side of online dating. A guy known as “TheRealPfhreak” hacked into his girlfriend’s Chrono Trigger ROM, filled it with memories in a new area named Koma Kulshan, then proposed. We know that some of our best friends were met in chat rooms, so we hope this will remind others to make virtual love, not war.

Nintendo says that there should be more Wii consoles available for this holiday season in the U.S. They also say that more Nintendo DS handhelds will be available.

Nintendo’s exec. vice president of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway said, “While there’s no way to gauge total demand for our hardware systems, we’re trying to satisfy as many of those players as possible.”

We shall see. With the economy the way it is, we expect Nintendo will want to get as many consoles out there as they can.

So, as we’ve already reported, Nintendo has announced the DSi, a spiffy new iteration of the DS franchise. There’s the larger screens, smaller profile, music playback, SD card slot…But what’s got everybody in a kerfuffle about it is the 3MP camera embedded in the system, both on the top and between the screens. The burning question now is what exactly Nintendo plans to do with the system, and how they’re going to integrate the features. So, if you want some uninformed opinion about the possibilities and future of the DSi, kindly hit the jump.

Last week we talked about rumors of a new Nintendo DS, and this morning, those rumors proved to be true. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata announced the Nintendo DSi at the company’s Fall presentation over in Japan, calling it a “third platform” for the company (where have we heard that before?). It looks fairly similar the the current DS Lite that we all know and love, but there are a few changes that make this one a worthy upgrade. First, it’s about 12% thinner, as it has given up its GBA slot. The screens are a bit larger, each being 3.25-inches in size. One of the bigger changes, though, is that the DSi features two cameras. You have one 3 megapixel camera on the outside of the unit, as well a front-facing camera on the inside so that you can take images of yourself.

The Nintendo DSi also has an SD card slot along with internal storage. You can save your photos right to the card, then put that card in your Wii to pull it up in the Photo Channel. Nintendo is even launching the DSi Shop, an online destination for purchasing DSi software, similar to the Wii Shop. You use Nintendo Points, and content will be priced at 200, 500, or 800 points. 1000 points will be included with the purchase of the DSi. The unit will come in either white or black for the time being, and goes on sale in Japan on November 1 at ¥18,900 ($178).

Rumor has it that Nintendo has plans for a new DS that will come out in time for the holidays. The DS2 will take pictures and play tunes. Also equipped for wireless application, it is expected to be less than ¥20,000 (~$189.00) when it is released in Japan. Although the DS is doing better globally, the PSP is outselling the DS there. We have no doubt that this move will make it more popular for those want the addition of the new features.

According to Japanese business site Nikkei Net, Nintendo may be prepping to release a brand new Nintendo DS (not pictured) by the end of this year. Supposedly, the new and improved DS will feature build-in music playback, better wireless performance, and, most interestingly, and onboard camera, all for less that 20,000 yen. There has not been an official press release by Nintendo, so you’ll want to wait and see how this develops, but it means that the new DS may integrate some of these features into new games, a la Final Fantasy: Before Crisis (which had you use your cell phone camera to craft materia). If past indicators hold true, it should arrive just in time for your Christmas shopping blitz, which would be fortunate, since the Wii has been perpetually sold out each holiday season - and I think that we’re all contractually obligated at this point to throw our money at Nintendo with every re-launch of a system.

UPDATE: Looks like we were right on this one, as Nintendo just announced the new Nintendo DSi!

Wii Sports is one of the most popular and accessible console pack-in games of all time, so it’s only natural that Nintendo would want to follow up with a paid offering. That’s where Wii Sports Resort comes in. The sequel to Wii Sports will be the first game to be compatible with the Wii MotionPlus add-on, which feature 1:1 mapping of your Wiimote. The game will come bundled with the MotionPlus device and an extended Wii Remote Jacket, both of which will also be sold separately. Games announced to be included (so far) are: Frisbee (Disc Dog), Jet Skiing, and Kendo, with more to come. Wii Sports Resort will launch in Spring 2009.